There are a lot of low-cost hosts offered that supply a decent service. WPEngine Security
What if you’re looking for more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? Because case, you’ll wish to take a look at our WP Engine evaluation for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific webhosting, offering managed plans that are completely enhanced for the platform. Obviously, when compared to lots of other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s plans aren’t exactly low-cost. You’ll desire to understand whether this hosting service is worth the expense prior to making a purchase.
To assist you out, we’re going to conduct an extensive WP Engine review for WordPress. We’ll discuss its crucial features, support alternatives, efficiency capabilities, and whatever else you’ll require to know. Let’s get started!
WP Engine Video Review
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About WP Engine
Founded in 2010, WP Engine is now one of the leading handled WordPress hosting companies in the market. Serial entrepreneur Jason Cohen began WP Engine when he saw a need for specialized WordPress hosting due to the rising popularity of WordPress.
WP Engine is Headquartered in Austin, Texas with workplaces in San Antonio (Texas), London (England), Limerick (Ireland), Brisbane (Australia), and Kraków (Poland).
The company has actually won multiple awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and regularly contributes to the WordPress core and community.
WP Engine Features
The core reasons to select WP Engine over cheaper WordPress hosting are increased dependability, performance, assistance, and management, but these are tough to measure. Some features stand out when you browse the interface, however, that can offer you some insight into the service provided.
WP Engine Page Performance is a cool tool designed to help you speed up your WordPress website by providing meaningful metrics on performance.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that information how quickly your page rendered, for how long it required to pack in its totality, and the overall size of the page. It even consists of historic data on your site’s performance over the past six months and recommendations on how you can lower page load.
You can develop your WordPress website in a Staging or Development environment before making the changes live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid embarrassing mistakes on your site by making changes to a copy of your site before it goes live. This is called Staging, and it enables your developers to make extensive changes to your website without affecting your clients.
WP Engine has a comprehensive list of plugins that are disallowed (Image credit: WP Engine) In a fairly unusual move, WP Engine limits the WordPress plugins you can set up. Those normally restricted are plugins that have been noted to trigger efficiency problems and security holes. For crucial features such as caching, backups, and seo tools, WP Engine has actually made options readily available that don’t put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine just uses handled WordPress hosting. There are 5 different plans available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All plans consist of endless data transfer. The strategies vary based on:
- number of WordPress sets up
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom-made strategy consists of dedicated dev. environments, client success, and priority assistance
WP Engine includes some distinct functions for WordPress users that most hosts do not use, or charge additional for. These special features include:.
- Git version control
- Staging: instantly produce a copy of your website for testing
- Easy transferable installs from complimentary to paid accounts
- Cutting edge technologies including latest PHP version.
In our WP Engine evaluation, we discovered that WP Engine offers the most advanced and extensive handled WordPress hosting functions.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.
User interface and in use
WP Engine’s user interface is professional and well set out, but the effective features may indicate a high learning curve for inexperienced users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and reroute guidelines, you’ll be right in the house here, but otherwise you’ll need to invest some time on the support site.
In our testing, the default WordPress home page loaded in simply over 2 seconds. This is one of the fastest actions we’ve checked, with competitor Liquid Web only somewhat behind.
Support
A managed WordPress service need to offer additional value through its support, and WP Engine provides. The support website includes videos and short articles of a quality you ‘d get out of a paid training course, with aid on much deeper WordPress functionality that numerous WordPress hosts don’t go into.
There’s 24/7 live chat support and a ticket system, too. In our testing, the reaction fasted and the agent educated. For all plans except for single-site strategies, there’s telephone support, too.
Pros
Exceptional Load Speed: If website loading speed is a leading priority, WP Engine does well in this regard. The host’s mix of custom NGINX extension, integrated Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD technology ensure that your web pages load rapidly. NGINX extension prioritizes human demands over robotic requests and provides load balancing, offering your visitors a much better experience. For its part, CDN delivers site content to your visitors based upon their location to improve your site’s speed and decrease latency. You get this ability totally free with all WP Engine strategies.
High Performance: It’s difficult to beat WP Engine’s efficiency, which is why individuals continue to pay a premium cost for this service. WP Engine ensures 99.95% server uptime, roughly four and a half hours of downtime a year. You can further increase your uptime to 99.99% with enhanced SLA, which equates to a little under an hour of downtime each year. WP Engine will compensate you with hosting credit if your uptime falls listed below the warranty.
Advanced Security: WP Engine keeps track of all the traffic going to your website and instantly identifies and obstructs prospective attacks. Additionally, the hosting service immediately updates and patches the WordPress core to eliminate potential vulnerabilities. In a worst-case situation, WP Engine instantly backups your website every day and has a one-click remediation feature to get you support and running quickly. This hosting service safeguards your site versus JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force attempts, and DDoS attacks.
Sensational Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to contact client care via chat. The support team has an excellent knowledge base and can assist you fix issues rapidly. You get 24/7 phone assistance for all strategies other than the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat support on all plans.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area enables you to clone your site’s live version and make changes or evaluate brand-new plugins and styles. Anything you carry out in the staging area does not affect your live website. This feature allows designers to work on sites without interfering with the live website’s performance or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting developers, this function enables you to build a website from your WP Engine account. You do not need to await the customer to include you to their WordPress website. When completed, you can move the site to the customer or host the website on WP Engine. This functionality saves time if you routinely develop sites for customers.
Cons
WordPress-Only Hosting: If you are using any other content management system aside from WordPress, then you are out of luck. WP Engine only works with WordPress. From a business viewpoint, it makes sense to focus on a single market and deal exceptional services in that location. Nevertheless, this model locks out many individuals who could otherwise gain from WP Engine’s services.
No Domains or Email Hosting: If you prefer to host your e-mail account and register your domain through your website host, you’ll need to look elsewhere. You’ll need to use third-party services for domain registration or email accounts.
Inflexible Pricing: WP Engine runs a tight ship, and this is reflected in its pricing structure. You will be penalized for surpassing your plan’s visitor limitations. This might not be an issue if you have predictable traffic, and you can constantly upgrade your strategy as your website grows. Considerable spikes in traffic during item launches or seasonal company can cost you significant overage charges.
There is no other method to put it: WP Engine is costly. Is it worth the cost? The answer depends on figuring out what you are spending for.
You can get shared hosting that can handle the exact same quantity of traffic as WP Engine for a portion of the price. You can even get devoted hosting for the very same rate as WP Engine. What you are really spending for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most notably, peace of mind. The ultimate concern is just how much these things deserve to you.
Plans and Pricing
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.
With a WP Engine strategy, you are generally spending for performance & not having to believe excessive about upkeep, security & speed. If you take a look at WP Engine’s pricing based upon the functions you’re getting- you really don’t get a whole lot.
And if you are the type who will consider your website’s health anyway (ie, keeping WordPress upgraded and usually visiting regularly), you’ll likely be spending for “management” that is superfluous.
Lots of shared hosting servers can manage the same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a portion of the price. My personal website a shared hosting plan from HostGator with basic caching) handled more than 15,000+ gos to in a 24 hour duration when a post of mine And if you are running a trustworthy VPS, you can certainly handle a lot more for much less. In fact, the site you are on deals with more than 110,000+ sees per month with a lot of space delegated spare for side-projects, gigabytes of media, e-mail, RSS apps, etc with an InMotion VPS. I spend for the VPS plus a CDN for less than WP Engine’s starter plan.
They are fairly transparent about how they count gos to, but it can still be rather a surprise for “little” site owners how quickly they can get into the $290 monthly tier. I have a customer who started with the Startup strategy, but rapidly ended up with a custom-made strategy.
And as pointed out earlier that doesn’t even consist of many of the features you don’t get with WP Engine’s plans. You can’t run any email from your servers. You have low limitations on regional media storage. Anything above the limits requires extra expenses & technical application of Amazon cloud services.
And most importantly for me- you are limited on your installs. If you have a few side projects or low-traffic test websites, you need to factor those into the cost. You can’t utilize them to expand the cost of your plan- specifically if you are hitting your visitor cap instead of your install cap.
If you are wanting to spend for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & provide your website files- WP Engine is an expensive alternative, specifically compared to other non-managed hosting options.
Start-up
The Startup bundle is one of the most basic plan and will set you back $25 each month. With this package, you get:.
25,000 sees per month.
50GB bandwidth monthly.
10GB storage.
One site consisted of.
WP Engine targets small websites and blog sites with this strategy, however we believe it may be overkill for many people in this category. You can get a far better deal with shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you do not wish to take any opportunities with uptime or require an assurance that your website can deal with 25,000 visitors each month, WP Engine is a sure thing. We ‘d advise this alternative to small companies, affiliate websites, and blog sites making good money and want guarantees that nothing will change.
You can save $60 each year or two months free if you pay each year.
Growth
The growth plan targets growing organizations and will cost you $95 per month. Here you get:.
100,000 sees each month.
200GB bandwidth per month.
25GB storage.
10 websites included a while.
This strategy is a great entry point for a growing business, and it might be a while before you require to upgrade. With this plan, you also get 24/7 phone assistance in addition to round-the-clock chat assistance. This addition will come in useful if you have an intricate problem that you need to fix quickly.
You can conserve a cool $230 or 2 months free with yearly billing.
Scale
WP Engine promotes its scale plan as the very best value alternative. This one expenses $241 monthly. Here you get:.
400,000 gos to monthly.
500GB bandwidth per month.
50GB storage.
30 sites consisted of.
We recommend this alternative for a fast-growing blog or business. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone assistance in addition to the support.
You can conserve $580 or more months free with yearly pre-paid billing.
Customized
Lastly, if you have a mission-critical website or big service, the Custom plan might be appealing. With this strategy, you get:.
Millions of sees per month.
400GB+ bandwidth monthly.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 websites included.
You will have to speak to a sales rep to get your customized quote depending on your requirements. This strategy likewise uses proprietary assistance ought to something go wrong.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Solid Uptime
WP Engine attains over 99% uptime thanks to its world-class network infrastructure.
The company also has three data centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can improve site speeds by choosing to host your website on servers that are closest to your target market.
WP Engine obstructs malicious attacks on your website.
Speed & Performance
There are a great deal of variables that enter into site speed, but the guideline is that the more complicated your website is, the more complicated the options to speed become.
Out of package- WordPress is relatively lean and quick. If you are running a mainly text website with a couple of fundamental plugins and a couple of small images, you’ll be great with a cost effective shared hosting plan from somebody like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But few site owners keep their WordPress install lean. There’s normally extra plugins, custom theme files, great deals of images, widgets, ads, forms and more.
All these functions combined with decent levels of traffic can begin to slow down your WordPress setup.
A slow site does not mean that you need a bigger, much better server. It does indicate that you need to get smarter about speed. Sometimes it’s as basic as getting a more effective server, but often it’s more about caching particular resources in a certain order and enhancing your files. To put it simply- it gets complex.
Picture you are attempting to carry a trailer with a pickup. Picture your trailer keeps getting much heavier. It’s pointless to keep grumbling that your truck is not big enough when you might simply require to remove the emergency brake, set up a turbocharger, revitalize the transmission fluid and consolidate your load.
The point is that WordPress requires assistance to remain quickly as you grow. There are lots of services … but either you or a developer must execute them.
That’s where handled WordPress hosting can be found in. WP Engine looks after (almost) all speed concerns. They have customized servers with extremely aggressive caching and even more innovative “stack” than a common webhosting. They also have actually trained assistance who will enter into your WordPress set up and determine the precise chokepoint to get your website moving.
They don’t even permit caching plugins on their installs due to the fact that they have such a tailored caching setup.
The intriguing thing is that even unoptimized WordPress installs still do well on their platform since their platform does the extra work.
Here’s the speed test for among my customers on WP Engine (who has a bloated style, extra scripts, a lot of uncompressed images, among other things)- Note the Time To First Byte and the Start Render numbers. That measures how quickly the server returned enough information to begin filling the page.
It’s good to have that sort of speed right out of package- and have it stay that way no matter how huge or complex the site gets.
* Note that the other point here is that if you are consumed about speed, you can get even better numbers with WP Engine than you might get with other services because you are free to focus on speed elements that you can easily control like image compression, use of scripts, etc
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not just supplies an integrated CDN, however they also offer international information centers in case your audience is mostly in Asia and/or Europe.
If you are trying to get top speeds without tinkering layered caching plugins- the WP Engine does exactly that. And since they work on Google Cloud, you do not have to worry about uptime either.
CDN Included
All plans consist of a global CDN (content delivery network).
The CDN will assist your website load quick for clients around the world by serving it to them from the network node that’s geographically closest to them.
Security and Backups
An estimated 78% of hacked websites are WordPress sites, according to Sucuri, a web security company. Regularly the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t upgraded.
Securing sites is one of the strong suits of WP Engine’s handled WordPress hosting service.
The business takes numerous procedures to protect WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs daily malware/virus scans in collaboration with Sucuri.
They keep an eye on an upgraded firewall to obstruct the latest dangers.
All websites are supported daily.
You get a one-click bring back function that can assist you recover your site in case of an attack.
The WP Engine website offers a guide on “Tips to Protect Your WordPress Site From Being Hacked.”.
You’ll have access to 24/7/365 technical support for any questions concerning security.
They supply webinars on security.
They release security standards and checklists for developers and engineers.
If your website gets hacked, WPE will clean it for free.
Online Resources
WP Engine provides webinars, guides, article, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can learn how to:.
Introduce your first site.
Troubleshoot typical issues.
Make improvements to your site.
Handle your hosting account with greater performance.
Both beginners and knowledgeable WordPress site owners will find the support documents invaluable.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back assurance on all membership charges is unique in the hosting market.
It allows you to try the service in a safe way.
Note: this alternative is not available on customized hosting strategies.
Is WP Engine Worth It?
Like any service, it’s not about what is finest overall, however what is finest for you based on your goals, spending plan, resources & routines.
If you are in what I think of as WP Engine’s core markets- they offer a great service with a solid item. As a handled WordPress host, their rates is competitive. They use more functions than “WordPress hosting” strategies from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unequaled for savvy DIYers, WordPress site designers and/or high-traffic sites that do not want to fret about hosting issues.
If managed hosting is a suitable for you- then go check out WP Engine’s plans here View Current Plans They do a 60-day money-back guarantee. Do a test install and see what you think of their backend. Make sure to talk w/ assistance & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.